Just The Desert

 I buried a


version of myself

without flowers

I buried a version of myself
without flowers

No casseroles cooling on church tables
No black umbrellas opening like wounds

Just the desert
wide as forgiveness
and the long ache of wind
moving through dry grass
like someone whispering my old name
for the last time

I carried him carefully

The man who learned how to survive
by becoming useful
beautiful enough
quiet enough
wanted enough
to remain invited into rooms
that never loved him back

I folded his shirts
like prayer flags

I thanked him
for keeping me alive through fifty years
of highways and motel mirrors
of love that arrived hungry
and left before morning
of standing perfectly still
while entire worlds were built on top of him

I loved him
mostly

That is the hardest part

Not every life deserves escape
Some deserve mourning

So I walked him out
past the last gas station
past the skeletal fences
past the mountains that look bruised at sunset

The desert did not ask questions

It only opened

And under that enormous sky
I began removing everything
like a snake against warm stone

The borrowed voice
The practiced smile
The old fear stitched into my shoulders
The need to be chosen
The need to disappear

Skin after skin after skin

Until there was almost nothing left
but breath
and heat
and the strange holiness
of being seen by nobody

I thought freedom would feel triumphant

Instead
it feels quiet

Like cold water on the back of the neck
Like sleeping with the windows open
Like stepping outside at dawn
half naked
unafraid of the light touching you

I do not know who arrives next

Only that he walks lighter

Only that the dust no longer clings to him
the same way

Only that somewhere ahead
beyond the red horizon
beyond all the funerals I have carried inside me

something living waits

And for the first time
I am not afraid
to meet it
bare-faced
sunburned
completely exposed.


I buried a version of myself

without flowers

No casseroles cooling on church tables
No black umbrellas opening like wounds

Just the desert
wide as forgiveness
and the long ache of wind
moving through dry grass
like someone whispering my old name
for the last time

I carried him carefully

The man who learned how to survive
by becoming useful
beautiful enough
quiet enough
wanted enough
to remain invited into rooms
that never loved him back

I folded his shirts
like prayer flags

I thanked him
for keeping me alive through fifty years
of highways and motel mirrors
of love that arrived hungry
and left before morning
of standing perfectly still
while entire worlds were built on top of him

I loved him
mostly

That is the hardest part

Not every life deserves escape
Some deserve mourning

So I walked him out
past the last gas station
past the skeletal fences
past the mountains that look bruised at sunset

The desert did not ask questions

It only opened

And under that enormous sky
I began removing everything
like a snake against warm stone

The borrowed voice
The practiced smile
The old fear stitched into my shoulders
The need to be chosen
The need to disappear

Skin after skin after skin

Until there was almost nothing left
but breath
and heat
and the strange holiness
of being seen by nobody

I thought freedom would feel triumphant

Instead
it feels quiet

Like cold water on the back of the neck
Like sleeping with the windows open
Like stepping outside at dawn
half naked
unafraid of the light touching you

I do not know who arrives next

Only that he walks lighter

Only that the dust no longer clings to him
the same way

Only that somewhere ahead
beyond the red horizon
beyond all the funerals I have carried inside me

something living waits

And for the first time
I am not afraid
to meet it
bare-faced
sunburned
completely exposed

alive No casseroles cooling on church tables
No black umbrellas opening like wounds

Just the desert
wide as forgiveness
and the long ache of wind
moving through dry grass
like someone whispering my old name
for the last time

I carried him carefully

The man who learned how to survive
by becoming useful
beautiful enough
quiet enough
wanted enough
to remain invited into rooms
that never loved him back

I folded his shirts
like prayer flags

I thanked him
for keeping me alive through fifty years
of highways and motel mirrors
of love that arrived hungry
and left before morning
of standing perfectly still
while entire worlds were built on top of him

I loved him
mostly

That is the hardest part

Not every life deserves escape
Some deserve mourning

So I walked him out
past the last gas station
past the skeletal fences
past the mountains that look bruised at sunset

The desert did not ask questions

It only opened

And under that enormous sky
I began removing everything
like a snake against warm stone

The borrowed voice
The practiced smile
The old fear stitched into my shoulders
The need to be chosen
The need to disappear

Skin after skin after skin

Until there was almost nothing left
but breath
and heat
and the strange holiness
of being seen by nobody

I thought freedom would feel triumphant

Instead
it feels quiet

Like cold water on the back of the neck
Like sleeping with the windows open
Like stepping outside at dawn
half naked
unafraid of the light touching you

I do not know who arrives next

Only that he walks lighter

Only that the dust no longer clings to him
the same way

Only that somewhere ahead
beyond the red horizon
beyond all the funerals I have carried inside me

something living waits

And for the first time
I am not afraid
to meet it
bare-faced
sunburned
completely exposed
alive

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Desert Never Forgets

Image
  At the crossroads where the desert splits itself like a wound, I sat.  I found a dive bar flickering under  neon bones of red and blue , a last-chance lantern for the lost. Inside,  country music bled slow from a cracked jukebox, steel guitar crying like a ghost that still remembered my name. Cigarette smoke curled into grey serpents above the bar, hissing secrets only the midnight and the damned could decipher. I drank  whiskey-bent lies straight from the bottle— truth tasted too clean for a night like this. The bartender’s eyes were moons of their own, half-lit, half-shadowed, seeing more than he ever dared speak aloud. Outside, the  full moon  hung heavy, round as an omen, bright as a spell, pulling at the sand, the blood, at every crossroads choice I’d buried under years of wandering. A gust rose from the west— warm, wicked, whispering— and I felt the desert stir, a witch’s hand brushing my spine , reminding me that magic lives in moments like th...
Read more

A Farewell Spell for Marfa

Image
  A Farewell Spell for Marfa There’s a certain kind of dusk that only belongs to Marfa—the kind where the light bleeds slow, like a wound refusing to close. Dust rises from the road in amber halos, and the air hums with that strange, invisible electricity that’s neither joy nor sorrow, but something in between. Out here, endings don’t announce themselves; they just drift in on the wind, quiet as tumbleweed shadows. The desert feels hollow tonight. The motel signs buzz faintly, the horizon wears its bruise of burnt pink and violet, and the ghosts of all my former selves wander the edges of town, whispering promises they couldn’t keep. Even the wind sounds different—less like a song, more like a sigh. Marfa was once a kind of spell for me. The wide, merciless sky taught me surrender. The desert dust buried my noise, my need to belong. There were nights when I swore I could feel the old witches stirring under the mesquite—old souls who taught me that solitude is its own kind of prayer...
Read more

The Starry Horse

Image
 The horse came out of a wound in the sky  Stitched from extinguished stars  And the breath of things unnamed  It did not bow its head  It regarded me as if I were an apparition  When I touched its neck my fingers passed through frost and fire  And the desert opened like a eye that does not close  Peyote dreams  Green lightning bleeding into veins of night  Mountains rising and falling like sleeping beasts  Every grain of sand whispered a tally of bones it had swallowed  Cigarette smoke drifted beside me  Though there was no hand holding it  It unspooled in thin deliberate spirals  Like a sermon spoken by a mouth without a face  A dive bar in the horizon  Neon buzzed like trapped insects  A jukebox coughing up dusty confessions  Whiskey staining the wood with amber halos  Men bent over their glasses like penitents  Drinking to forget the shapes of their own shadows  The starry h...
Read more